Posted on 12/30/2008 5:33:46 AM PST by publius1
Does anyone know where George W. Bush is?
You don’t hear much from him anymore. The last image most of us remember is of the president ducking a pair of size 10s that were hurled at him in Baghdad.
We’re still at war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Israel is thrashing the Palestinians in Gaza. And the U.S. economy is about as vibrant as the 0-16 Detroit Lions.
But hardly a peep have we heard from George, the 43rd.
When Mr. Bush officially takes his leave in three weeks (in reality, he checked out long ago), most Americans will be content to sigh good riddance. I disagree. I don’t think he should be allowed to slip quietly out of town. There should be a great hue and cry — a loud, collective angry howl, demonstrations with signs and bullhorns and fiery speeches — over the damage he’s done to this country.
This is the man who gave us the war in Iraq and Guantánamo and torture and rendition; who turned the Clinton economy and the budget surplus into fool’s gold; who dithered while New Orleans drowned; who trampled our civil liberties at home and ruined our reputation abroad; who let Dick Cheney run hog wild and thought Brownie was doing a heckuva job.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
"The Bush administration specialized in deceit. How else could you get the public (and a feckless Congress) to go along with an invasion of Iraq as an absolutely essential response to the Sept. 11 attacks, when Iraq had had nothing to do with the Sept. 11 attacks?...
He then set the blaze that has continued to rage for nearly six years, consuming more than 4,000 American lives and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. (A car bomb over the weekend killed two dozen more Iraqis, many of them religious pilgrims.) The financial cost to the U.S. will eventually reach $3 trillion or more, according to the Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz.
"And then there’s the Bush economy, another disaster, a trapdoor through which middle-class Americans can plunge toward the bracing experiences normally reserved for the poor and the destitute....
"The president would give the wealthy and the powerful virtually everything they wanted. He would throw sand into the regulatory apparatus and help foster the most extreme income disparities since the years leading up to the Great Depression. Once again he was lighting a fire. This time the flames would engulf the economy and, as with Iraq, bring catastrophe...
"There seemed to be no end to Mr. Bush’s talent for destruction. He tried to hand the piggy bank known as Social Security over to the marauders of the financial sector, but saner heads prevailed.
"In New Orleans, the president failed to intervene swiftly and decisively to aid the tens of thousands of poor people who were very publicly suffering and, in many cases, dying. He then compounded this colossal failure of leadership by traveling to New Orleans and promising, in a dramatic, floodlit appearance, to spare no effort in rebuilding the flood-torn region and the wrecked lives of the victims....
"The catalog of his transgressions against the nation’s interests — sins of commission and omission — would keep Mr. Bush in a confessional for the rest of his life. Don’t hold your breath. He’s hardly the contrite sort."
I read the whole thing and kept wondering, what must Herbert's world be like? What is it like to live in fear from morning to night and blame everything on one person--and then I thought, It must be like reading the Times and listening to NPR from morning to night....
only the NYT (and the left) would find this as a negative...
Herbert hates this POTUS because Herbert is on the other side.....the side of our enemies........the hate America side. That's why he has so much hope for Obama.
Yes, Mr Bush will be the butt of every downfall for some time to come while, the Libs escape scrutiny.
Didn't Obama say that 10,000 people died from Katrina? This is now artfully worded to given that same impression, yet skirt a little closer to the truth.
Unfortunately, New Orleans will be forever an albatross around the neck of George W. Bush. Totally unfair, of course, but I think that it will be hard to avoid that perspective in the history books.
To Bob Herbert from millions of decent Americans - Please get on the first jet or boat available and take your sorry American hating A$$ to Africa or wherever your ancestors came from. While there, you can write stinging articles about the past of Idi Amin, and the present of Odinga. If it were not for patriots like George Bush, our country would quickly become a copy of Kenya, Sudan, Zimbabwe et al.
Maybe that's because the media megaphones are set on "0."
Bob needs to carefully re-read his pocket Constitution on presidential authority.
Add up the damage...
PEBO
Here’s hoping old Bob is on the unemployment line in the New Year when the Times officially goes under.
What a bloated ego.
He feels that what a US President says is more important than what he does. So no doubt he loved Bill Clinton, who made the media’s job easy, while utterly ignoring his presidential duties.
The second Clinton’s presidency was over, his “legacy” was Bush having to clean up all the work he ignored, while Clinton was pining that he wished he had been a “war” president. Other than that, Clinton’s entire presidency had the lasting importance of Millard Fillmore, and far more embarrassing and destructive.
W. Bush’s presidency will have positive ramifications for the next 200 years. He stopped a dozen bloody civil wars, prevented nuclear proliferation in half a dozen unstable states. He opened India, after being the only person in Washington with the foresight to see a value in doing that. He pushed through military force modernization in record time, despite the fierce opposition of a bunch of flag officers.
He not only recreated Iraq to become the most powerful nation in that region, and as a democracy, but also started democratic movements in every other non-democratic country in the region.
By his command, the US military wiped out tens of thousands of murderous fanatics, which will pacify the Muslim nations for several generations.
Yeah, he hasn’t been much for pounding the pulpit, attending gala cocktail parties, creating endless and humiliating scandals, and performing like a clown at a dozen photo ops every day. But he’s been busy.
Not that the NYT has been even vaguely aware of that. They might have been if they had watched FOX News, but all their televisions air is PBS and BRAVO.
Herbert’s mission in life is to keep the hatred of GWB alive. Without hatred he, like the greater majority of those on the left, have no reason to get up in the morning. It makes no difference if what he says about this POTUS is truer or not, it’s like Limbaugh said, with liberals it is not the nature of the evidence which is important it is the seriousness of the charge.
Truly those on the left are an afflicted lot.
**But hardly a peep have we heard from George, the 43rd. ***
GW is not a chicken - so no *peeps* to hear.
These MSM twerps are better equipped to report on Obama’s “uhms” and Carolines “you knows”
Those are real peeps!!!!
And your probably a troll. You can lay 95% of the blame for Katrina aftermath on the crooked democrat politicians in LA as well as the plantation mentality of many of the residents. As to flowers from Iraqi’s I never heard George Bush claim that would happen , I however heard him say it would be a long hard job.
Nice to know Bob's newspaper was on the forefront of sounding the economic alarm and helping their readership avoid the trouble.
The only people still suffering from Katrina are the ones who refuse to get off their asses and work. I went through Katrina (in Jackson, where it was only a Cat-2 hurricane, but still). The folks on the Mississippi Gulf Coast have worked it through and gone on with their lives. The Lamestream media keeps on focusing on Louisiana, because many of those victims are a bunch of lazy bums only interested in getting a permanent check from Da Gubmint.
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